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Your Tax Dollars At Work - Funding Another Extremist Palestinian Camp For Teens

By Rafael Medoff / JNS.orgAugust 14, 2017

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Two prominent US senators are raising questions about an American-funded school in Ramallah, which is running an extremist summer camp for Palestinian teens from around the world — many of them Americans.

The controversial summer program, called "Go Palestine," is run by the Ramallah Friends School, a 148-year-old Quaker institution in the Palestinian Authority's de facto capital.

Its stated mission is to provide Palestinian teens from abroad with "introductions to Palestinian culture, cuisine, life and work, and the Arabic language."

But in addition to traditional summer camp fare, Go Palestine participants are immersed in anti-Israel films, and lectures by militants — some with terrorist connections.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) gave the Ramallah Friends School $800,000 in 2016 to make various improvements to its facilities. USAID also sent the school $700,000 in 2015, $900,000 in 2014 and similar amounts in prior years, through USAID's “American Schools and Hospitals Abroad” program.

The school is owned and operated by the Indiana-based Friends United Meeting, one of the major divisions of the Quaker movement.

US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the evidence gathered by JNS.org concerning Go Palestine is "disturbing" and that USAID "must immediately investigate it." Schumer added: "If true, this school should be cut off because entities that receive USAID should be teaching about democracy and coexistence — not intolerance or extremism."

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) is a longtime supporter of USAID’s assistance to overseas schools, but "the allegations described are quite concerning" and Cardin "has reached out to USAID for an explanation," a spokesperson for the senator told JNS.org.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman and CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JNS.org, "I endorse the calls by Senators Schumer and Cardin for an investigation to make sure that no US government funds are being used, directly or indirectly, to support a camp that promotes BDS or other anti-Israel extremism."

A USAID spokesperson told JNS.org that the agency "has not provided any support to the ‘Go Palestine’ program." USAID's grants to the Ramallah Friends School, which hosts and operates Go Palestine, were "for construction and durable commodities," including improvements to the buildings on campus, USAID said.

The spokesperson did not address the fact that Go Palestine participants make use of those buildings on various occasions each summer.

The three-week Go Palestine program, which began in the summer of 2011, accepts 40-50 campers each year. It costs $2,150 per camper, plus airfare.

Although the camp has not released a complete breakdown of its participants by nationality, the "camper profiles" shown on its website from 2011-2013 indicated that Americans were the single-largest contingent at that time.

Other campers hailed from the UK, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Several came from what the website calls "Haifa, Palestine."

Haifa is located within pre-1967 Israel, not in the disputed territories. The camp's use of "Haifa, Palestine" is one of the many indications that rejection of Israel's right to exist is an integral part of the camp's ideology.

The camp's own descriptions of each year's activities from 2013-2017 report that the teens are shown films such as Occupation 101 and Jerusalem: The East Side Story, which depict Israel as a racist, savage oppressor.

A panel on "Youth Activism and Engagement in Palestine" featured representatives of "the Love Under Apartheid Campaign and the BDS movement." Officials of a group called "Right to Education" also explained to the campers that all Israeli universities should be boycotted, since they are part of "the structure of systemic oppression."

This year's campers heard "an inspiring lecture from Nasser Ibrahim," whom the camp describes as "a renowned journalist, author, and teacher." Ibrahim has been associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group.

He has served as editor of the PFLP weekly publication El Hadaf, and is deputy director of the Palestinian Union of Health Work Committees, which USAID has characterized as a PFLP affiliate.

The 2016 and 2015 campers visited "the monument erected for the Martyrs of Birzeit." The monument — on the campus of Birzeit University near Ramallah — memorializes students who were killed while engaging in violence against Israelis.

And 2015 campers met in Bethlehem with "ex-prisoners," and heard about their "experience in the Israeli occupation jails." Palestinian "ex-prisoners" are often convicted terrorists.

Go Palestine's directors declined to respond to requests from JNS.org to identify the crimes for which those ex-prisoners were jailed, nor to respond to inquiries concerning other aspects of the summer program.'

The online brochure for Go Palestine promises that it "will change your child’s life forever," and video blogs on its website illustrate the impact that the program has had on its participants. A camper named Nidalia Nazzal, from California, declares, "Now I appreciate all the people fighting for freedom."

Sama Sarraj, a teenager from Maryland, pledges that her "top priority” will be to "educate people and raise awareness" about "the situation of the Palestinian people."

The activities of the Go Palestine program could further complicate the already strained relations between the Quaker leadership and the American Jewish community.

The Quakers' public policy division, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), has endorsed the BDS movement, and sponsors training programs for boycott activists.

Middle East scholar Asaf Romirowsky, who has written extensively about Quaker attitudes toward Israel, told JNS.org that it is "hypocritical" for Quaker leaders to claim to be pacifists and advocates of coexistence "while their Ramallah school is training teenagers from around the world to hate Israel and idolize terrorists."